Sarah Palin jumped right in and took sides in the intraparty squabble going on in NY23, bucking the GOP establishment and endorsing conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. This fits with what we know about Palin's style, the brand image she wants to promote, and her willingness to take political risks.

Meanwhile, Tim Pawlenty was also asked whether he would make an endorsement in the race. He responded:

"I haven't been following that," Pawlenty said of the contest. "I haven't studied the race at all. It's not that I would or wouldn't [endorse Scozzafava], I just don't know anything about it."

Can't get much more cautious and non-committal than that. If that is any indication of Pawlenty's style and the kind of approach he takes to the 2012 GOP primary, I'm not sure how inspiring he'll be to the base of the Republican party, especially in a crowded field that will probably include Palin, Huckabee, and Romney, among others.

A new survey from USA Today/Gallup shows Obama's job approval rating right at the 50% mark, with 46% disapproving of the way he's handling the job. This represents a 4-point decline in Obama's standing since the last USAT/Gallup poll in mid-September showing him at 54/43.

Overall, President Obama's job approval rating stands at 51.7% in the RCP Average .

(Note: this survey, taken Friday through Monday among 1,521 adults, is a different sample than Gallup's daily tracking poll which currently has Obama at 51%.)

A dozen conservative publications and blogs are calling on New York 23 special election nominee Dede Scozzafava (R) to withdraw from the race. The online editorials, including from National Review, Washington Times, Washington Examiner and RedState.com, were all published at around noon today.

The calls for Scozzafava's withdrawal come in response to her husband calling the police on Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack, who was attempting to question the GOP nominee on some of her policy stances following a campaign event. McCormack followed her into the parking lot for further questions, and a police officer later approached him, saying the candidate had been "startled."

Conservative groups, including Club for Growth, are standing behind Doug Hoffman, who is running on the Conservative Party line in the Nov. 3 contest. They're turned off by Scozzafava, who is backed by national GOP committees as well as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, because of her positions on numerous issues, including abortion, card check and taxes.

Pushing back on a Politico article this morning, which reported Republicans are worried about a 2010 electoral backlash to conservative activists and media personalities, House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) took to the House floor today and called it "hogwash."

"Lately the national media has taken aim at conservative commentators in radio and television -- suggesting that they only speak for a small group of activists, and even suggesting in one report today that Republicans in Washington are 'worried about their electoral effect.' Well, that's hogwash," Pence said. "So to my friends in the so-called 'mainstream media' I say, conservative talk show hosts may not speak for everybody but they speak for more Americans than you do."

You can download and watch the clip here.

James Arthur Ray, the New Age impresario who urged his ghastly ill followers not to leave a Sweat Lodge — leaving three to die — was no marginal figure in that huge American subculture that political strategists generally overlook.

Ray made a name for himself and a $9.4 million business as a regular on Oprah and a guru showcased in “The Secret,” the hit New Age book/DVD. The Sweat Lodge purging was part of his “spiritual warrior” experience in Sedona, Arizona, for which he charged nearly $10,000 a head.

The political media tend to ignore the world of rebirthing, channeling and finding “energy fields” in pretty rocks because New Age practitioners tend to ignore them.  New Age followers are mostly white, college-educated women who are liberal-to-the-heart. They almost always vote for Democrats…when they vote.

Democrats would do well to monitor the messages beamed to this natural constituency. Here's a passage from “The Secret”: “When I discovered The Secret, I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good.”

I have some dear New Age friends and blood relatives. They won't be reading this because though they love me, I write about political strife, and that doesn't make them feel good.

One didn't know that there was a governor's race in her state. Another couldn't name her congressman. That's the level of their political engagement. They are involved enough to vote in presidential elections but not enough to care (or know) about the midterms.

Apolitical women routinely tell pollsters that what they most hate about politics is the nastiness. Smart Democrats will find a gentle means of activating these sometime-voters. Note that “The Secret” has sold over 16 million copies.

www.fromaharrop.com

A new poll shows President Obama would defeat four of his potential opponents in the 2012 presidential election. The more surprising news, though, is that for the second time in a week, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee leads among his presumed opponents for the Republican nomination.

Rather than facing each other in this poll, the Public Policy Polling survey (Oct. 16-19, 766 RV, MoE +/- 3.5%) pit each Republican up against Obama, and for the seventh consecutive time, Huckabee fared best.

Obama 47 - Huckabee 43 - Und 10

Obama 52 - Palin 40 - Und 8

Obama 50 - Pawlenty 30 - Und 20

Obama 48 - Romney 40 - Und 12

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty remains the least known among the GOPers, as 72% have no opinion of him and 20% remain undecided in a face-off between Obama and him.

Note: On this day in 2008, Obama led John McCain by 7 points in the RCP National Average, 49.9% to 42.9%. Obama, of course, would go on to win by 7.3 points, 52.9% to 45.6%.

A new Rutgers Eagleton poll gives Gov. Jon Corzine (D) a 3-point lead with less than two weeks to go in the New Jersey gubernatorial race. With this survey, Corzine has taken a lead in the RCP Average of polling for the very first time.

General Election Matchup
Corzine 39
Christie 36
Daggett 20
Don't Know 5

Asked for their second choice, 34 percent of Daggett's voters say they would pick Christie, while 28 percent say Corzine and 24 percent say they would not vote at all. Daggett is tied among voters who say they've heard a lot about his property tax plan; but Corzine actually pulls ahead among those who say they've heard nothing about it -- which is a quarter of the electorate.

"Daggett continues to draw fairly evenly from both major party candidates," said Eagleton's Dave Redlawsk. "However, in a close race, it may make a difference that Daggett voters are people who would have been slightly more on Christie's side than on Corzine's in a two-way race. The underlying question is whether current Daggett supporters really will vote for him on Election Day, or whether they will opt for their second choice, one of the major party candidates."

Redlawsk also states: "While Daggett is clearly having an impact on this race, it seems that on the current trajectory, the vote would have to be very close for his candidacy to make the deciding
difference. ... It's important to remember, however, that in two recent New Jersey Governor's races (in 1993 and 1997), the victor's margin was only about 1 percent of the vote."

Corzine and Christie are tied amongst men, 38-38, but Corzine has a 6-point advantage among women. His campaign's attacks on Christie over the mammogram issue has become a defining issue in the race

Favorable Ratings
Corzine 40 / 52
Christie 39 / 42
Daggett 31 / 15

Corzine's job approval rating is 29 percent, with 70 percent disapproving.

Voter engagement in the race appears to be lukewarm, with 36 percent saying they are following the election "very closely," and only 38 percent say they've watched or listened to one of the candidate debates. That factor is one reason why Democrats have brought in national surrogates to generate free media attention on New York and Philadelphia television stations that otherwise tend not to cover Garden State politics closely.

The survey of 583 likely voters was conducted October 15-20, with a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percent.

A lot of attention has been paid to Jon Corzine's numbers in the New Jersey governor's race, where he can't seem to get above 42% of the vote in polls. This is, of course, of less significance now than it was a few months ago, since 43% will probably be enough to win the election, but it's still an interesting observation.

There's a similar, less heavily commented upon phenomenon going on in the Virginia Governor's race. The polling for October is, at first glance, all over the place. McDonnell consistently leads, but the polls show leads of 7, 8, 8, 9, 11, 14, and 19 points.

When we look at the individual candidates' numbers, however, we see a different pattern.  Creigh Deeds' numbers are very stable: 31, 40, 40, 41, 43, 43, 44. McDonnell, on the other hand, comes in at 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, and 59 percent of the vote.

You can read into this whatever you want I suppose, but the most plausible explanation is that soft voters are leaning against Deeds, and the wide variance we see in the various McDonnell leads can be almost entirely attributed to how hard undecideds are pushed.  The fact that polling with small numbers of undecideds generally shows the largest McDonnell leads is not good news for Deeds, or for Virginia Democrats.

UPDATE: This analysis is without the new PPP poll, which again shows Deeds at 40%, McDonnell at 52%

Yet another anecdote illustrating the disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street. And with it, one more reason for public frustration to focus on Goldman Sachs.

A Goldman executive has shot from the hip and hit himself in the foot. Bloomberg reports today that Goldman Sachs International adviser Brian Griffiths said:

We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday at a panel discussion at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The panel's discussion topic was, “What is the place of morality in the marketplace?"

Firstly, Griffiths has his facts wrong. Income inequality does not “achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all.” In other words, you don't need gross income inequality to attain prosperity. The U.S. economy soared after World War II despite a relatively small income gap.

From the close of World War II to Richard Nixon's reelection, non-supervisory workers real wages increased as the GDP increased.

But real wages stalled by 1972 and never recovered. The average annual salary today is actually several thousand dollars lower, not adjusting for inflation, than salaries in the mid 1980s. The wealth gap began to soar in mid 80s. An oft cited statistic illustrates the point: in 1980 the CEO-to-worker ratio in annual earnings was 42-to-1; by 2005, it was 411-to-1

But, it bears repeating, while 401ks were not rising proportionally with the rich they were still rising with the rich. This recession changed that. Now much of Wall Street is earning record profits, offering record bonuses, while Main Street languishes.

The tone of Griffiths' comments may be most important. They betray yet again Wall Street's shame (or I should have written, shamelessness). So many on Wall Street appear utterly clueless to the debt they owe the public. It was government intervention that stopped a run on banks like Goldman and Morgan Stanley. For more information, read this excerpt of "Too Big to Fail."

And Griffith is not the only executive lately with a tin ear. As I wrote Monday:

Here is John Mack, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, recently speaking on CNBC: "To be honest with you," he said dismissively, executive pay is "an easy target" and "enough's enough."

It appears not enough for this White House. In news sure to offer political gain, but also based on real Wall Street impropriety, Bloomberg also reported today:

The Obama administration will order seven companies that received the most government assistance to cut salaries of top executives by 90 percent on average, a person familiar with the situation said.

Barack Obama has suffered the worst third quarter decline in his public approval rating of any elected president in the post-World War II era.

Obama's average quarterly approval rating has slipped from 62 percent in the second quarter to 52.9 percent in the third quarter, according to Gallup polling. That 9 percentage point decline is twice the amount of any other post-war elected president. Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan saw their standing decline 4 points between the two quarters. No other elected president has declined more than 4 points since 1953. The third quarter began July 20 and ended October 19.

Harry Truman, who of course inherited the presidency from FDR, dropped 13 points between his second and third quarters in 1945 and 1946.

Significantly, Obama's plunge in the polls is notable but not new news. Obama suffered the bulk of his decline in late summer, though the media was slow to notice or note. Since summer, Obama has stabilized and generally bobbed slightly above the 50 percent mark. However, Gallup's latest tracking poll shows Obama right at 50 percent. That matches the lowest ranking of his still-young presidency. Rasmussen also tracks Obama near his previous floor.

Among all presidents since WWII, Obama's third quarter approval rating is above only Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford. Clinton averaged 48 percent in the third quarter of 1993. Ford averaged 39 percent during his 1975 third quarter.

More sobering for Obama, Gallup reports that Obama's latest quarterly average ranks 144th, or in the 44th percentile, for all post-war presidents during any quarter.